Madame Chiang Kai Shek and Eleanor Roosevelt

The Times says the book is awful, but isn't the photo sublime. The turn of the ankle, the rich blue velvet and inscrutable face. The way the eye is drawn to Madame Chiang Kai, how she gives nothing but takes everything. Then Eleanor's distinct blend of American naivete, grit, and optimism.

Christopher Isherwood, traveling in China with W. H. Auden,
met Madame Chiang in the late 1930s. He caught her aura exactly: “She
could be terrible, she could be gracious, she could be businesslike,
she could be ruthless. . . . Strangely enough, I have never heard
anybody comment on her perfume. It is the most delicious either of us
has ever smelt.”